BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor (still)

No new grist for the BludgerTrack mill this week, but there’s a Greenpeace-sponsored federal poll and some preselection news to relate.

There haven’t been any new polls this week, so the headline to this post isn’t news as such – the point is that a new thread is needed, and this is it. Developments worth noting:

• We do have one new poll, but it was privately conducted and so doesn’t count as canonical so far as BludgerTrack is concerned. The poll in question was conducted by uComms/ReachTEL for Greenpeace last Wednesday from a sample of 2134, and has primary votes of Coalition 38.8%, Labor 36.7%, Greens 9.7% and One Nation 6.1%. A 53-47 two-party split is reported based on respondent-allocated preferences, but it would actually have been around 51.5-48.5 based on preferences from 2016. The poll also features attitudinal questions on carbon emissions and government priorities, which you can read all about here.

• The Greens have landed a high-profile candidate in Julian Burnside, human rights lawyer and refugee advocate, to run against Josh Frydenberg in the normally blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong. This further complicates a contest that already featured independent hopeful Oliver Yates, former Liberal Party member and chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

• The Liberal preselection to choose a successor to Julie Bishop in Curtin will be determined by a vote of 60 delegates on Sunday. Initial reports suggested the front-runners were Celia Hammond, former vice-chancellor of Notre Dame University, and Erin Watson-Lynn, director of Asialink Diplomacy at the University of Melbourne, which some interpreted as a proxy battle between bitter rivals Mathias Cormann and Julie Bishop. However, both have hit heavy weather over the past week, with concerns raised over Hammond’s social conservatism and Watson-Lynn’s past tweets critical of the Liberal Party. Andrew Tillett of the Financial Review reports that some within the party believe a third nominee, Aurizon manager Anna Dartnell, could skate through the middle.

• Tom Richardson of InDaily reports moderate faction efforts to install a male candidate – James Stevens, chief-of-staff to Premier Steve Marshall – in Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt are prompting a slew of conservative-aligned women to nominate against him. These include Deepa Mathew, a manager at the Commonwealth Bank and state candidate for Enfield last year; Joanna Andrew, a partner with law firm Mellor Olsson; and Jocelyn Sutcliffe, a lawyer with Tindall Gask Bentley. However, Stevens remains the “overwhelming favourite”.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.
View all posts by William Bowe

2,867 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor (still)”

The media had to pay for their trips to Christmas Island with ScoMo and learnt nothing.

[Morrison and the Immigration Minister, David Coleman, used the press conference to make several points. There are no children left in detention on Nauru and Manus Island. The government has closed 19 detention centres over five years. Boat arrivals have stopped.

Australians have heard each of these arguments before, usually at no extra charge in a press conference from Parliament House.
…
Morrison did not need the tropical backdrop of Christmas Island to make his case. There are perfectly good palm trees in Sydney.]

In a bid to make themselves relevant to their constituents ahead of the May election, all six QLD Nationals have found a ‘clean coal’ miner’s rebellious spine and signed a letter of demand which was “obtained by The Australian”.

As Steve here noted early it is expected to “reignite the Coalition’s civil war on energy policy, demanding that Scott Morrison put his shelved “big stick” laws to a vote in budget week and fast-track a decision on the underwriting of a new cleaner coal plant”.

Why now? Well [1] regional Queensland will take some time to recover from the recent flood decimated crops, machinery, infrastructure and live-stock including and especially in the marginal Labor held seat of Herbert (Townsville) so unemployment has escalated in regional QLD and [2] the employment cure-all in regional Queensland is of course for Scomo to sign contracts to underwrite a “cleaner coal plant in regional Queensland” before the election is called.

And so say
Michelle it’s mining Landry of Capricornia 50.6
Ken O Dear of Flynn 51.0
George Coalminers son Dawson 53.4
Llew O where’s Brian of Wide Bay 58.1
Keith coal Pitt of Hinkler 58.4 and the next leader of the Nationals
David Daddy will be proud of Maranoa 67.5

McCormack must have known this letter was coming when he did this train wreck interview with Walid Ali.

This will not help the Nationals in NSW in either the State or Federal elections to hold off SFF and Indy’s. It makes sense for the QLD Nationals to put a line the sand ahead in an election period and look like they are dissociating themselves from their Liberal LNP brethren so they can save at some of the furniture and maintain a QLD voice in the post-election Nationals Party. More smoke and mirrors.

While there is a chance that official interest rates will drop soon, the amount would likely be 25 basis points. However, there is absolutely no guarantee the Banks will pass it on in full. That happening during an election campaign would be a poisonous outcome for the Government..

Perhaps the point of the “anti-terrorist fence” outside Duttons office is to try and create a perception that he is a victim, and that those attacking him are the real threat to society.
I hope im overthinking it…. if he can turn around his image from someone who terrorizes people to someone who needs to be protected, then our democracy is in some strife.

Like I have said before, the Nationals need to change their name to The Miners Party. Although, like the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers maybe they should change their name to The Miners, Agribusiness and Science Deniers Party.

Joizus! If those Coal Mines in the Hunter Valley get approved I’ll even join The Greens’ organised protests against it! 😆

Hey Late Riser- please put me down for 53-47 for both Newspoll and Essential and 52-48 for Ipsos.

In other news, on a flight to Sydney for work yesterday, I wondered whether fate or fortune had seated me next to PB royalty. My co-passenger in row 14, who’d managed to score several baby bottles of wine during the flight, started yelling (no exaggeration) about his intense dislike of Bill Shorten as we taxied into Mascot. His appalled travelling companion, who it turned out was a Greens voter from a generationally Liberal family, tried to calm him down by saying he was making people uncomfortable (well yeah, just a bit!). The Shortenophobe turned to me and said – “This gentleman isn’t uncomfortable. I’m sure he’d vote Liberal.” I could only smile and say – “sorry to disappoint you mate” and disembark as soon as I could when we docked. Rex/Nath – where were you on the afternoon of the 6th?

An investigation by Guardian Australia can reveal the covert campaign, dubbed “Project Caesar”, was orchestrated by world-renowned political operatives at the C|T Group, the firm founded by Sir Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor.
…

Campaign teams helped set up online grassroots groups to push positive messaging about clean coal technology, attack renewables and criticise the Australian Labor party. The practice is commonly known as astroturfing.

One source with knowledge of Project Caesar said it was linked to Energy in Australia, a Facebook group and website that attacks renewables, while supporting high efficiency, low emissions (Hele) coal plants through data, memes, graphics and video.

Posts blame renewables for blackouts in South Australia and Victoria, link renewable subsidies to “Saudi billionaires”, and stress a link between solar, wind and rising power prices. The group celebrated the formation of the Monash Forum, a group of federal MPs who speak in support of coal, including Coalition MPs Craig Kelly, George Christensen, and Tony Abbott.

Dutton allocated himself a close personal Federal Police protection squad soon after the establishment of the super ministry.
This means that a Federal Police Detachment of at least two officers and a police car follows his government car on a trip from, for example the airport to parliament. This is to assure his safety.
This security service had previously been the reserve of the PM, the Queen and other dignitaries.
Dutton has serious problems with reality and his contribution to parliament.
What has Dutton done that warrants such security?

David Rowe has three more for us today.
David Pope on the latest economic numbers.
From Matt Golding.
What a beauty from Cathy Wilcox!
John Shakespeare with the Parrot reacting to Daley.
Matt Davison and the state of the Catholic Church.
Andre Dyson on the difficulty in accessing a Home Care Package.
Peter Broelman on Guthrie’s payout.
And he reminds us of what happened in 2007.
Glen Le Lievre at the modern Garden of Eden.
And he fact checks Morrison over negative gearing.
Justifiably, Sean Leahy is upset about the lack of fluoridisation of water in Queensland.
Jon Kudelka goes underwater.
And he puts Christmas Island into perspective.https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/7e3f872033b2614ad59bd0d71f6afa59

Thank you, BK.
From the last thread: Dutton would receive many, many death threats. Most of these would probably be white noise.
Some of them could well come from people who from time to time chop off heads and blow up some women and kids and who would dearly love to kill Dutton.
It is an unfortunate modern reality that there are people in Australia who daydream about murdering people like Dutton.
Dutton’s successor will face more or less the same suite of death threats and death wishes.

Morning all and thanks BK. The Oz aside the media has for once called it as it is on the economic news – unambiguously bad.

The “strong plan” was to loot treasury for ScumMo’s mates. Now we know. BTW remember that suspicious half billion plunge on banking shares just before the release of the Hayne RC report? Two months later, still no mention of any answers on who, and if it was legal?

Amidst all the incompetent management, lets not lose sight of the need for an RC into government corruption.

Three days of Scomo in the west will not make a jot of difference I suspect PBers from WA will tell us how it goes but I’ve pencilled in Pearce, Swan and Hasluck as more than maybe’s this time around. IF Scomo is doing a three day WA as reported tour they must be worried about WA big time, no ? Standard practice has been to fly in once pre-election, make noises about ‘fairer GST’ for WA and the knick off back to where you came from [ala Abbott, Turnbull]

Dutton allocated himself a close personal Federal Police protection squad soon after the establishment of the super ministry.
This means that a Federal Police Detachment of at least two officers and a police car follows his government car on a trip from, for example the airport to parliament. This is to assure his safety.
This security service had previously been the reserve of the PM, the Queen and other dignitaries.
Dutton has serious problems with reality and his contribution to parliament.
What has Dutton done that warrants such security?

Goll, you’ve got it around the wrong way – that security detail is there to protect the public from Peter Dutton!

ScoMo probably wanted a long lead-up to the election to give him time to get all his ‘messages’ out. Instead, I think he’s given the electorates (and his desperate team) time to wish it could all be over.

Clancy Yeates reports that Westpac is axing bonuses for its 2300 tellers and will instead pay them fixed wages, a move it says will allow staff to focus solely on serving customers, as banks try to regain the community’s trust.

FMD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was not the bloody bank tellers who brought about the Royal Commission . It was the pricks in positions like the twat who had this brain fart of an idea to ‘regain trust’. The Banksters have learnt nothing.

Yes George Frazis it was all those tellers chasing the $500 ‘mountain’ of cash what done it eh ?

Westpac will from next month stop paying any bonuses to tellers, and lift their fixed pay by $500 so that affected staff are not left worse off…………………“What it means for our tellers is they can actually just be concerned about providing great service to our customers and making sure that they do whatever they can to meet our customers’ needs,” Mr Frazis said..

Please read if you aren’t yet aware of how the govt is wasting your money while torturing the unemployed.

I can honestly say some of the worst experiences I’ve ever had regarding Centrelink have been with DES providers. These are not specially trained workers as you may think: educated in health issues or social barriers, empathetic and eager to support. Most of the time I have had case workers with far less education than me, with little life experience and no clue as to the reality of my medical conditions. I try very hard to hold onto my self-worth in these appointments. Many times, I don’t succeed. But I must attend, or risk having my payments suspended.

…The system we are forced to use is not a mutual obligation, but a system of relentless bowing and humiliation – being forced into pointless busy work like unrecognised courses to feed this government’s insatiable need to make the unemployed “do something”. Feeding the idea that us “lazy slobs”, as they like to paint us, need beating into submission. And all this mutual obligation is overseen by Job Networks and DES providers who profit off punishing us for the tiniest infractions. They profit from bullying their clients and using taxpayer money to fund these activities, all in the name of making us “leaners” remember our place.